Dear readers, Thank you for all your friendship and support of this, my first-ever foray into the internet/blog world. Now, with the help of the great people of New Digital, I’ve got a new website where the Cheapskate Intellectual blog … Continue reading →

Pop quiz: I took the photo above on a) December 15 b) January 15 c) April 15 The answer, as anyone in the Upper Midwest can guess (channeling Prince) is C. And yet, despite more fierce thick snow today, it’s … Continue reading →

“Is Facebook a monopoly?” is and is not the right question to ask. Here’s why. Watching a batter-up rotation of senators take turns at questioning Mark Zuckerberg this week, and listening to the public response to the unfolding spectacle, shows … Continue reading →

Longtime Cheapskate readers will recognize lots of the ideas and anecdotes here – thank you for being a great and supportive community all these years. I’m launching the book at Dragonfly Books and will be taking it to Content Books … Continue reading →

This weekend I read Tara Westover’s new memoir Educated in one sitting. The story it tells is compelling: raised in a survivalist, fundamentalist-Mormon family in Idaho, Westover first attends school at age seventeen (her first day at Brigham Young University) … Continue reading →

A rerun from 2011 that’s been on my mind. Merry Christmas, y’all. — “I’ve been a pastor for more than 15 years, and I am still amazed at folks in nursing homes, many unable to remember the majority of their … Continue reading →

Sen. Elizabeth Warren sits at her desk, coffee cup and phone nearby, holding a 500-page chunk of paper — the Republican tax bill — she was given an hour to read before the vote. “So,” she begins, “here it is … Continue reading →